The Giver has taught me...

"All of us are bound to face multiple challenges and hardships in life,

and sometimes we complain about life not being fair. Living in Singapore with such a competitive education system undoubtedly adds on to these great challenges that most of us have to face as well. It is no doubt that many of us struggle to meet the high expectations of our parents who have invested huge amounts to enable us to further our education and as a result, many of us, myself included are inclined to grumble and think that life is simply not fair for us.

However, as I was reading The Giver, I realized how fortunate we actually are to live in our present environment as compared to Jonas’s society. In Jonas’s society, the people are protected from any form of pain or hardship and lead rather controlled lives, where they have no choices on how they want to lead their lives.

Almost everything the people in The Giver’s society do is controlled and not theirs to decide,even to the extent of them not being able to choose their own Assignments and their own spouses. This in my opinion, does not allow the people to think for themselves and causes them to indulge in the ”comfort” of ignorance.

In such a society, the people are not allowed to make mistakes as everything is chosen for them. Consequently, the people are not given the opportunity to pay for the consequences of their mistakes and learn from them. I think it truly is very sad That the simple joy of overcoming hardships or actually even by making the right choices are taken away from them. In such a community, I really wonder how the people live through such meaningless lives.

I feel that by reading The Giver, I have also learnt to appreciate the lessons from the challenges that we face in life. By enduring such hardships, I believe that we are better able to handle the balls that life throws at us and I feel this makes us richer in our development as a whole.

It is also by reading The Giver that I have come to realize the beauty that creation offers,such as colours. In the hustle and bustle of life, I feel that many of us fail to stop to appreciate these seemingly insignificant aspects of life and overlook them. I believe that all of us should start to recognise all these simple pleasures of life because I feel thesen are the little factors that brings all the meaning to our lives"